Embodiments of the present invention relate generally to methods and systems for facilitating collaboration in a contact center and more particularly to providing a roster of recommended subject matter experts on a topic related to an ongoing customer contact session.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems or other contact center systems provide support for customers of a product or service by allowing those users to make requests for service that can include a question posed by the user related to the product or service. Generally speaking, these systems receive requests for service, e.g., in the form of a phone call, web page form, instant message, email, etc., and route the requests to a human agent for addressing the request and providing an answer to the question. In ideal cases, the agent is selected based on the topic of the question or request and a predefined profile of that agent that includes indications of the agent's skills and/or expertise. Once the agent has been selected the customer is placed in contact with the agent and an interactive session can be conducted between the agent and customer using any of the available channels, e.g., voice call, chat, web page form, instant message, email, etc.
Some CRM systems also provide a means for an agent to collaborate with others, i.e., other agents or other subject matter experts, while handling the customer contact. In some cases, the system can provide a workspace or a team workspace that provides a way for users to share and collaborate on data for specific purposes. Some examples of such workspaces are forums, white boards in the Internet domain and workspaces in several enterprise applications. In other cases, collaboration between an agent and another agent or other subject matter expert can take the form of a chat, email exchange, or instant messaging. However, all of the above methods require the agent to decide who they should ask for assistance, based on the agent's knowledge of other people's skills and attributes, or based on pre-defined groups. In other words, agents are only as good as the rolodex of people they know or must “get lucky” by reaching out to a large list of people. Hence, there is a need for improved methods and systems for facilitating collaboration in a contact center.